I was born on the 19th March, 1978 in Budapest. My father is saxophonist and composer László Dés, my mother is sociologist Mária Vásárhelyi. I started playing music when I started school. I took classes in the music school in our district in Budapest, studying classical percussion. I went to that school for five years. Later on it became evident to me that the world of timpani is not very close to my heart, but the knowledge that I have accumulated in the music school, learning the basics, was of great advantage during my further career.

I drifted close to music again in my high school years. I became a member of Hey Band, the group of the Lauder Javne School, which played Sephardic Jewish music. As a matter of fact it is they I have to thank for starting playing percussion again, and on a more serious level. From one band came another and soon I was invited to several bands playing world music. The first one was the trio of Barna Gábos, but it was also during this time that I made the acquaintance of David Yengibarian, the Armenian accordion player who has since then become renowned. In those days I played a lot with Attila Korom’s group. I liked his unique world of songs and lyrics. I also had the opportunity to try myself at playing traditional Rom/Gypsy music as a guest performer in the band Khanci Dos.

My jazz career started with the group Bosambo. I am grateful to this day to István Tóth, a.k.a Sztív (Steve) for having confidence in me, an 18-year-old greenhorn, and inviting me to play in his band. We have given numerous concerts with Bosambo over the years. Among other places we have been to Moscow, and to the jazz festival of the Bashkir capital, Ufa. I have met the bass guitar player, József Barcza Horváth earlier in David Yengibarian’s group. New doors opened for me when Józsi invited me into the band Off Course where I met such influential musicians as Elemér Balázs, Gábor Juhász and Róbert Szakcsi Lakatos. In those days we were also performing a lot with the band founded by singer Linda Kovács. This is where I first met Dávid Lamm, with whom I have since been playing in different formations.

In 1998 my father, László Dés, together with Péter Geszti created one of the most popular Hungarian pop-bands of recent years called Jazz+Az. Having heard my improved playing, he decided to ask me to play percussion in the band. We have spent two fantastic years with this band, touring Hungary a number of times, and giving a sold-out final concert in Kisstadion (Small Stadium). The concert is also out on DVD.

Roughly in the same period I was playing with Jazz+Az, Zsolt Kaltenecker who originally was my piano teacher, invited me to play with him. This invitation was a great honor and challenge for me as Zsolt is an exceptionally prepared musician with brilliant technique. We recorded a duo album, then we became a trio with the joining of bass guitar player Péter Papesch. We recorded two more albums with this formation, and I also collaborated on the electric album Zsolt and Andrew J did together.

In the autumn of 2000 during a recording session, drummer Elemér Balázs mentioned that he is about to form a new band and he would like to invite me. At that moment I had no idea that this invitation would mark the beginning of one of the most determining connections of my life. Being a percussion player next to Elemér is an utterly exceptional experience. After my father, perhaps it was him I learned the most from about music and playing music. Apart from the continuous changing of band members, there were permanent members of the band during my time there: Józsi Balázs, Elemér’s younger brother and the fantastic singer Gábor Winand who later on invited me to play in his own quartet. I contributed to five albums of the Group, and also had the opportunity of playing with such world-renowned musicians as American saxophone player Charlie Mariano and the Catalan singer Nuria Rial.

My father László Dés has also been a guest performer a number of times in Balázs Elemér Group, and later, on the occasion of recording a score for a film, invited five members of the band together with Kornél Fekete-Kovács to his septet. With this group we have recorded to albums and have toured the country several times. There is also a DVD out from the second album called Utcazene (Street Music). In 2005 the band took part in the Concert of Joy project, a concert organized on a floating stage in the middle of the Danube, where we had American trumpet player Randy Brecker as guest performer. I have also worked together with my father on a number of different special projects. Among others I joined the Ferenc Snétberger - László Dés duo, thus forming a trio. The trio gave a concert in the grand hall of the Music Academy in Budapest which was recorded and is out on CD.

It was a new kind of challenge for me when Péter Eötvös invited me to take part in the recording of his piece Music for New York. My father and I improvised to an electro-acoustic piece recorded thirty years ago. Another great experience was playing Concerto by Kálmán Oláh together with the Symphony Orchestra of the city of Miskolc. We performed the piece in Kosice (Slovakia) and Miskolc (North Hungary) among other places and then in May 2008 we performed it in the Palace of the Arts in Budapest, which presented me with the opportunity to play together with Jack DeJohnette, Gerard Presencer and Ron McClure.And as a member of the quintet formed by Kornél Fekete-Kovács I also played with the Pannon Philharmonics in Pécs, Hungary.

In more recent times the bands of different lady singers tend to dominate my professional life. The band Mitsoura (the group formed by singer Mónika Miczura Juhász) brought a new kind of experience. It wasn’t only the high-tech sound and visuals that made this project special but also the many different superb musicians who made up the band. It was in the project that I first played with tabla-player Péter Szalai, the multi-instrumentalist András Monori, cimbalom-player Miklós Lukács and Márk Moldvai, the musical mind behind the band, who does all the orchestrations.

I have met Bea Palya in the Laokoón Csoport (Laokoón Group) where I was a regular guest performer. Since then we have been brought together by fate a number of times: for example it was her I invited to one of my exams in the Music Academy’s jazz department where I taught her to play percussion on a milk-can. I have been a member of her band for four years and in this time we have recorded two albums and have toured half of Europe. The two albums are: Sándor Weöres Psyche and Adieux les complexes, the latter of which was published by the French label Naďve. In January, 2009 Bea invited me to play with her in Carnegie Hall.

Ági Szalóki has been one of the most important people for me in the last few years. I play in three of Ági’s formations: I accompany her solo material called Hallgató; in her program for children called Cipity Lorinc, and I have also taken part in the project called Szájról-szájra (From Mouth to Mouth), in which she is working together with another two brilliant singers, Ági Herczku and Szilvi Bognár.

At present I also play in the Miklós Lukács Quintet and in Zoltán Lantos’s Mirrorworld formation. During the 2008 Mol Jazz festival in Budapest, the guest performer of Mirrorworld was the fantastic Norwegian guitar player, Eivind Aarset.

My own trio, the András Dés Trio was founded in the autumn of 2007. Since then we have played a number of festival and club concerts and we have recorded an album called Unquiet Stillness in September 2008. The other two members of the band are guitar player Szabolcs Oláh and double bass player Mátyás Szandai.